Do you have a recipe for piada? I would like to compare it w/ mine. Also what are some traditional uses. Sometime I fill it with cooked greens (erbe I've heard it called) then cook kinda like a calzone I guess. Otherwise I just use them like tortillas to make sandwiches, but also love to eat them with my salad.

I don't have my recipe here. I'll send another post later when I find it so you can see.

Are they supposed to be dry (kind of like a soft cracker) or soft so they can bend easily?

A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new. - Al EGuests, like fish, begin to smell after three days. - Ben Franklin

Piada or piadina is a tipycal food of Romagna, a zone of my regione near the sea. I know it very well because my father was born near Rimini and he knows it very well.

My recipe for piada is the following: 1 kg of flavour, 15 gr. of baking soda, 300 gr. of lard, a very little honey and salt. If you don't want to use lard you can use an half glass of olive oil

You have to mix the ingredients in the order that I wrote until you have obtained an hard dough. Than you have to work the pasta in a small ball with the rolling pin (mattarello) until you have obtained a thin layer of pasta. Then you have to cook this thin layer on a pan until swell small bubbles. Than you have to turn the piada on the other side and it is ready.

Here in Italy piada is eaten with differents types of salumi: Ham, Salami, Pork, Bowl Head and others differents types.

You can also put inside soft cheese like mozzarella or stracchino and a salume or only cheese...or you can put in vegetables au gratin or sausage and onion...

Different is the Cascione: Is made as same as piadina but you put inside erbe (cooked greens) sauteed with oil and garlic or mozzarella and tomato or mozzarella and sausage or potatoes and sausage or also nutella and close the Cascione with the help of a fork.

You must fold in half the piadina with filling, to close pressing on the hedge with the fork ant it'all.

But you have to press very strong because it could open in the pan and it is a problem...

It coul be soft so you can bend it easy...but thicker than a tortillas...

Thank you Simone. Your recipe looks very similar to the one I use. Except, do you use water? It looks like you forgot it. My nona & nono came here from San Marino. It is very close to Rimini, maybe you know it. This makes me very interested in the food from that region.

I first mix 2.2Kg Flour, 21g Baking Powder, & about 1TB Salt. Then add 225g each Crisco & Olive Oil, then 1L water with 15g yeast mixed into it.

I combined what I like from 3 different recipies. Also I was told that the yeast will make them softer, more like a thick tortilla. When I've tried with only baking powder (nona doesn't use yeast) the piada break when I try to fold them.

I don't know of any REAL Italian Schools near me. I have been told by a few resturant managers & chefs that if I want to continue to work in Italian Restaurants here that I need to focus on American-Italian, & stop trying to learn the actual cucina romana. That upsets me a little, but I am no less determined to learn it anyway. It is my favorite!

A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new. - Al EGuests, like fish, begin to smell after three days. - Ben Franklin

Hey guys it really is better for the community if you start a new thread to discuss a topic like "Piada". No harm or foul just a request in the future that if you want to talk about a specific food topic just start a new thread. Thanks!

I think the reason we lack true Italian cooking schools here in the US is that the ingredients that are at your fingertips in Italy are not always available here. One example is the black cabbage used in Ribolita.. we don't have it here and it's the one ingredient that produces a lot of the flavor in that Tuscan soup.

I've a great friend who owned a ristorante en Perugia but he met a woman and moved to Turkey where's he's opening a bistro. You sound just like him as he offered the same type of advice. He's given me a few good recipes and we hope to one day work in a kitchen together!! I've sent some his way too but they are "Americanized" utilizing what we have. No tender baby carcuifo (artichokes); just large ones!! So we have to use canned...

Thanks a lot for your message, what are you saying is right, ingredients that we have fingertips in Italy there aren't in America...but i think that in USA you cqan teach the italian way to make kitchen, the ingredients in some way can be different...In Bologna I organize kitchen's course where i teach not only the recipe (that you can find on internet too) but the method and the way to work in a kicthen...

Perugia is a small but beatiful city, one of the girls that work in my restaurant come from Perugia...